Kickstart: Year-end shopping sprees

Welcome to some of the biggest sales days of the year. I'm not referring to holiday shopping, but the rush as investors work to complete mergers and acquisitions before the end of the fiscal (and calendar) year.

As PN's Frank Esposito wrote at the halfway point of 2021, this year has been a very strong one for sellers anxious to sell while prices are high and private equity groups have a lot of cash set aside.

"People are saying, 'The market looks good, so let's go,'" John Hart, managing director with P&M Corporate Finance in Southfield, Mich., told Frank back in July.

Just in the first half of the year, M&As in the food and beverage packaging end market were up 185 percent vs. the first half of 2020. Flexible packaging sales were up 275 percent and the automotive and transportation sector was up 225 percent. Granted, that's compared with 2020 when the start of the COVID-19 pandemic disrupted a lot of planned acquisitions, but the numbers seen then already were ahead of other recent years.

And judging by news releases received by Plastics News recently, there are a lot more deals on the way for the final weeks of 2021. Just this week there have been sales announced for machinery makers, materials suppliers, building product makers and specialty film companies. One molder, Myco Plastics, opted to buy a nearby toolmaker rather than invest in building up its own toolroom.

So with only a few weeks left to go in 2021, don't be surprised to see more M&A news show up over the next few weeks.

Just in case you thought environmental groups only target the U.S. plastics industry, a nonprofit group says it has successfully halted a shipment of 37 shipping containers filled with plastic waste generated in Germany that was bound for Vietnam.

Basel Action Network said the planned shipment attempted to skirt around a ban on low-value plastic waste being dumped in Southeast Asia by sending the containers to Turkey, then from Turkey to Greece before they were due to head to Asia.

The containers had been in Turkey for nearly a year. Initially the materials were exported for use as feedstock at a Turkey recycling plant, BAN said in a news release. But the plant "lost its operating license before the shipments were completed."

The group contacted officials at the Greek port of Piraeus, which was then able to halt the shipment. BAN said it is attempting to get the waste back to Germany.

Forget about the annual holiday cups at other coffee chains. The coffee and bakery chain Panera is rolling out "ugly holiday cups" for some lucky winners, made with sturdy plastic that will last well beyond New Year's Day.

Panera teamed with TikTok artist Emily Zugay on a line of intentionally ugly cups that are designed to "remind us all that it's what's on the inside ... that matters most." (Panera, of course, would remind you that what's on the inside is its coffee.)

As our sister magazine Advertising Age writes, Zugay is popular for redesigning popular brand logos in ways she finds more representative, frequently using stock fonts, Microsoft Paint-esque drawings and misspelled words.

"With anything that I 'design,' I don't allow myself to think about it for too long," Zugay told Ad Age. "If I do, it can take the fun out of it for me."

The cups are currently available at no cost, with winners picked through an online lottery.